What telematics can do for you

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Telematics provides a wide variety of information about a vehicle to users in real time. Graphic courtesy of Element Fleet Management

Telematics systems have long been used as fleet management tools, allowing users to keep track of locations and other pertinent information about the vehicles and heavy equipment at their companies’ disposal. However, telematics systems have other benefits, beyond the vehicle location, which could make a very positive impact for businesses with smaller fleets or even an operator with a single vehicle.

“Telematics is basically a device attached to some kind of valued asset that is recording a fundamental set of data back to a service in real time,” says Todd Ewing, director of product management for Verizon’s Fleetmatics brand. “It could be a trailer. It could be a piece of yellow-iron equipment. It could be a service truck. It could be a long haul. It could be a power unit. Really, telematics is just the technology that connects a device back to service that records that information in a number of ways.”

System for small business

Fleetmatics offers a package specifically designed for smaller businesses called Fleetmatics Now. Ewing says that Fleetmatics is focused on operational efficiency and using data to drive change in a business. In many service industries, the vehicle becomes a good proxy for the driver and for behavior in the field.

“You can really learn a lot and understand a lot about their behavior by what is happening to the truck,” Ewing says. “It also adds an element of objectivity. The truck has no motivation issue — the truck didn’t leave its phone at the job site even though it’s not there anymore. It can be considered a more objective way to deliver results and information.”

Kim Clark, telematics product leader with Baltimore, Maryland-based Element Fleet Management, says that beyond the traditional “dots on a map” interface often associated with telematics there are other benefits for users. Whether you have one vehicle on the road or 50,000, there’s still a benefit in terms of visibility to assets, security and real time access to data.

“Being able to access that you’ve got a check engine light — basically, what does that light mean and what should you being doing from a maintenance perspective?” Clark says. “An operator in a truck who’s got to follow upcoming hours of service regulation, being able to have a system that ties into the electronic logging device helps to satisfy those regulations. You have people on the road, sometimes travelling long distances where you have them in unusual situations where there’s a security factor. Having that visibility and tying it in is really critical in any sized fleet.”

Enabling consistent service

Don Scare, manager of truck excellence for Element agrees, adding that telematics offers great benefits for maintenance, by allowing users to be more consistent in the services they’re selling.

“From that aspect, telematics is measuring the engine diagnosis, also from the standpoint of the hours that the engine is running,” Scare says. “In some cases in the service industry, where they’re operating cranes and a lot of accessory equipment, they tend to idle long periods of time. The manager of the fleet would be able to manage that service level and duty level to make sure the engines are maintained properly.”

Ewing says that driver-safety aspects of telematics will be very beneficial to smaller business owners as well. Many telematics systems have accident-detection technology and can call emergency services on their own after a collision.

“For small businesses, a lot of times they’re interested in safety,” Ewing says. “They know it’s hard and they won’t spend the time to quantify it, but they want that reputational value of knowing the vehicle is being operated safely. When we watch individual drivers across the fleet, even in a small group of drivers, just how they operate the vehicle can have a real impact on efficiency and, obviously, safety and reputation.”

Ewing says that the smaller a business is, the harder it is to keep a business owner’s attention on a daily basis. As such, the most successful solutions focus their design on the premise that the software will only be utilized for 10 or 15 minutes per day.

“They’re a small business owner that has a lot of things going on,” Ewing says. “How do you make that small interaction really valuable? That becomes a very key consideration. Accept that you’re not going to spend every day in here. You don’t want to — you’ve got a business to run. How are you going to get the most value out of what you see?”

“Gamification” in the offing

Going forward, the telematics industry will continue to evolve more efficient systems, platforms and ways of doing business. Ewing foresees that telematics may undergo a “gamification,” where a system’s data is used as a basis for leaderboards and competitions for drivers. Clark emphasizes that greater connectivity with original equipment manufacturers will become standard as more and more vehicles and equipment will be sold with some sort of telematics system already onboard.

However, the most important thing for telematics companies themselves, in her view, will be to offer a variety of solutions based directly on the customer’s needs.

“We need to make sure that we have an offering for every single one of our customers and fit all size budgets and needs,” Clark says. “It’s not the cookie-cutter approach that the industry has traditionally taken.”